Adam Dick

The US House of Representatives on Friday again voted to pay for war on the Islamic State (ISIS) without ever having a debate and vote on the authorization of the war. This result is par for the course given the House leadership is well practiced in manipulating House rules to scuttle efforts by Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and James McGovern (D-MA), as well as by other House members, to ensure that the legislative branch fulfills its constitutional responsibility to decide when the US government uses military force.

By barring war debates and votes, the House leadership ensures the continued legislative rubber-stamping of the wars the executive branch unilaterally pursues.

The authorization of funding for the ISIS War that the House approved Friday is included in the massive National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2016 (HR 1735) that covers funding authorization for the Department of Defense generally. This leaves any representative who voted for the legislation with the ability to deny responsibility for the ISIS War by saying he voted for the NDAA just to advance some combination on other provisions in the bill.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Speaking Tuesday on the United States House of Representatives floor, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) again urged Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility by debating and voting on if the United States government will continue militarily intervening in Afghanistan for nine more years. Referring to Afghanistan as “well known by historians as the graveyard of empires,” Jones, a Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Advisory Board member, details the high cost in thousands of US troops killed, tens of thousands more US troops wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the US government in the first 14 years of the Afghanistan War. Jones proceeds to note that a new bilateral security agreement President Barack Obama has entered into with Afghanistan “ties us — our nation — to a failed policy for another nine years.”

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Texas took a step toward leapfrogging past all the states that have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use so far. In March, Texas State Rep. David Simpson introduced legislation (HB 2165) that would remove references to marijuana from the state criminal code so the plant would be legal just as are tomatoes. And, you know what, Simpson’s bold, no-compromise, forget about “taxing and regulating” move is yielding success in a state many people write off as destined either to never legalize marijuana or to be one of the last states to legalize marijuana. On Wednesday, the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee approved Simpson’s bill by a 5 to 2 bipartisan majority — after HB 2165 was moderated in the committee to retain marijuana restrictions for juveniles.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Friday morning, viewers of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal were treated to nearly an hour of in-depth discussion among Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and James McGovern (D-MA) and show host Peter Slen regarding the representatives’ efforts to bring to the United States House of Representatives floor debates and votes on whether to end or continue the US government’s various wars. The representatives, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, also discuss their newly created Constitutional War Study Group that will seek to regularly gather Congress members for education related to Congress’ constitutional war powers.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

You can hear a high level of outrage in the voice of Judge Andrew Napolitano when he discusses on the Alan Colmes Show on Tuesday the death of an American in police custody in Baltimore, Maryland and the use of United States drones to kill three more Americans overseas. Napolitano expresses outrage regarding the killings themselves, as well as processes followed in the Baltimore and US governments that facilitate such killings and hide their details.

Continue reading at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.